In retrospect, waiting a couple of days before completing the Ethics Alarms analysis of the “Green New Deal” was a propitious decision. The results of the ethics, integrity and IQ tests that this fiasco represents can clarified considerably. The key question to begin most ethical analysis is “What’s going on here?” Well..what is?

1. Incompetence. The Ethics Alarms reader poll asking which of the provisions of the GND would, by themselves, mandate rejecting the leadership and judgment of any public figure endorsing them showed about 58% choosing “all of them,” with the infamous “providing economic security for all who are unwilling to work” coming in a distant second. I erred terribly in not providing a positive option for readers who see nothing wrong with Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s batty manifesto. Ethics Alarms gets 3000-4000 visits a day, and surely some readers must have flunked this test. After all, Democrats are counting on a large segment of the population being similarly obtuse. This is my own bias at work. There are some episodes involving ethics where I really cannot comprehend how anyone with all their faculties and raised a U.S. culture can possibly reach a different ethics verdict that I have. Ethics is hard, but it isn’t THAT hard. The fact that there are, apparently, progressives and useful idiots who can read the screed without giggling is itself ethics alarms-worthy. The culture, including crucial components like education, journalism, and the world of politics, is failing our society by allowing warped perceptions and unethical values to take root. If this were not true, no elected official would dare propose a document like the Green New Deal.

2. Dishonesty and deception. It sounds like a mad conspiracy theory, but it is difficult for an objective observer not to conclude that the GND is part of a long-term plan of propaganda and indoctrination to replace American democracy with a leftist totalitarian regime. The kinds of measures being promoted in the GND—forget for a moment that most of them are literally impossible—cannot be achieved through democratic means, except in the broad sense of the public voting to give dictatorial powers to the government. The process flows from eco-fascism, which employs fear-mongering about an inevitable environmental catastrophe to provide justification for sacrificing individual liberty in the pursuit of “safety.” This is, as readers of world history knows, the traditional trade-off sold by totalitarian regimes. Yes, it is true that the quality of life and personal freedoms of the American public would both be severely constrained by the car-less, plane-less, nuclear energy-less, combustion engine-less, money-less and cow-less future that the socialist Democrats propose, but the alternative, we are told, is death and destruction. Academy Award-winning actress Ellen Page ranted on Stephen Colbert’s alleged late night comedy show (It is a partisan propaganda program with jokes) that “We have been told…that, by 2030, the world as we know it, that’s it. That’s it!” Colbert, who has the undeserved reputation as a truth-teller and sage, nodded sympathetically, saying that “until the water started swamping Manhattan, or just washes away Mar-a-Lago,” the public and media wouldn’t take the existential threat seriously. “You don’t want to think such terrible things are going to happen!”

Oh sure you do, if it will give you leverage to gain power over the nation.

3. Integrity failure. I wondered if the New York Times’ resident leftist economist and Trump-basher, Paul Krugman, would have anything to say about the economic implications of the Green New Deal. After all, he is the first to his keyboard to condemn as irresponsible and cretinous every Republican tax proposal or stimulus idea. I would assume that his position would make him duty-bound to explain to his ideological cheering section that the GND was the equivalent of a nuclear bomb being dropped on the economy, as well as, you know, stupid.

Nah! Krugman is completely ignoring the thing. Since he could not possibly defend it without looking like a fool, and criticizing its blatant incompetence would require him to be disloyal to his “team,” he’s just pretending it doesn’t exist, and the progressive punditry is largely following his lead.

4. Irresponsibility and Cowardice. Almost all of the major candidates for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2020 have endorsed the Green New Deal. (Rep. Gabbard, if she can be considered “major,” was a notable exception for pointing out that eliminating air travel would be a problem for her state of Hawaii.) This is incompetent, irresponsible and cowardly, as they know—Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris are many things, but they are not stupid—that the hard left Democratic base is enamored of such fantasies. This is signature significance for untrustworthy, dangerously principle-free leadership. Senator Lindsey Graham is pushing for a vote on the Green New Deal so the cowardly Democratic senators have to go on the record in their support for increasing the debt logarithmically and sending us back to the caves based on some dubious computer models none of them can read. Good.

5. Denial of accountability. One water mark of totalitarians is that they will retreat to a Big Lie rather than accept responsibility and accountability when their mistakes are exposed. After the embarrassing Green New Deal announcement was taken down from the web, Ocasio-Cortez, bolstered by media hacks like Media Matters, began claiming that criticism of its most ridiculous features was a right wing plot, and that a false document, planted by conservatives, was being falsely represented as the actual Green New Deal. Robert Hockett, a policy adviser for Ocasio-Cortez (and a Cornell professor), went so far as to go on Fox News and tell Tucker Carlson that the “Economic security to all who are unable or unwilling to work” line wasn’t part of the GND at all. “We never would and AOC has never said anything like that,” Hockett said. “I think you’re referring to some sort of document, some sort of doctored document that someone else has been circulating. Apparently some Republicans have put it out there, I don’t know the details,” he said.

He was lying. Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff said the document was part of an early draft that “got leaked.” The document was hardly leaked: it was published on Ocasio-Cortez’s website. Another lie. As for the Rock Star Rep herself, she layered on the lies too, tweeting,

“When your #GreenNewDeal legislation is so strong that the GOP has to resort to circulating false versions, but the real one nets 70 House cosponsors on Day 1 and all Dem presidential candidates sign on anyway.”

6. Media incompetence, bias, and complicity. Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias. The mainstream media, with the exception of Fox News, resorted to covering the Green New Deal by collecting reactions to it, rather tahn by reporting the truth: that it was an embarrassment. Some media sources went farther than mere contrived indifference. Here’s a tweet from the Business Insider, endorsing the Big Lie that the Green New Deal release was an accident:

In summary, the ethics and integrity portion of this national test was flunked, and badly, by Democrats, the news media, pundits and academia. The results of the IQ component of the test are still being compiled. Is the American public, or at least a critical mass of it, as gullible and ignorant as Ocasio-Cortez, Democrats, progressives and the news media seem to think they are?

I still insist this entire nonsense is just one extended article from “The Onion.” Krugman is continual proof of Harry Truman’s views on economists: “Give me a one-handed Economist. All my economists say ‘on hand…’, then ‘but on the other…”

Between the Adidas shoe issue and this, we really are doomed. This is working well, primarily because the majority of our elected leadership have IQs of 80 or less (which is becoming more and more clear): and after Kavanaugh, is it any surprise that intelligent, analytical individuals refuse to run or hold public office?

Some of them do seem to be “mentally challenged”: On the other hand, I believe that there is a faction of above average IQ ruthless sociopaths operating in Congress with a loan shark mentality. There is a sucker born every minute in the USA waiting to be taken in by this Ponzi scheme.

When we are told shutting down government when no agreement is reached after debating the debt ceiling is hostage taking how can anyone expect the American people to understand that you cannot simply just add more debt. We are at twenty one trillion dollars now and the average American believes that we never need to retire the debt. Spending 13T more oh well as long as my taxes don’t rise or my Social Security is cut. Polling Americans on the subject of “investing” in green initiatives is like polling 5 year old and asking how many support chocolate cake for breakfast.

Those who think the world as they know it will end in twelve years it very well may when our creditors shut off the money spigot when the Chinese currency replaces the dollar aa the world standard currency.

“Until the water started swamping Manhattan, or just washes away Mar-a-Lago…”

All it would take to get people on board is for climate-change alarmists to make some predictions that actually come true. I wasn’t even born yet in the 70s, and I know about the “population bomb” that was supposed to kill us all 30 years ago. When I was in elementary school we were all going to die in a nuclear war. And in 1990 we were just 10 years away from having no oxygen because of deforestation. (And that was all BEFORE the world ended in 2012.) I don’t know about you, but I’m worn out from all the cataclysms that experts in the field of whatever-I-need-funding-and-attention-for-ology assure us are just around the corner.

Make some public predictions and then tell us when they happen the way you said. I want to believe you. But what you’re doing now is pointing at phenomenons you didn’t predict and saying “See? That was climate change.”

People throw shade at me for believing the Bible, but the Bible’s book of Daniel predicted the time of Jesus’ coming, the destruction of the second temple by general Titus, and the subsequent spread of Christianity hundreds of years before they happened (how many hundreds, and whether it also predicted Alexander the Great, depends on when you think it was written.) Maybe it was all lucky guessing, but it’s a far better record so far than climatologists have had predicting what sorts of disasters we’re going to die in.

As a warm-up act these climatologists should just give us an accurate prediction of next weekend’s weather. If they can do that for a couple months running, maybe people will give some attention for their predictions for 20 or 30 years down the road.

Anyone that doesn’t burst out laughing or audibly roll their eyes after conceding support for the GND MUST despise poverty-stricken brown-skinned poor people in India, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brazil, et al.

Why? These poor people, most leading meager, marginally subsistent existences, would KILL for 5 % (if that) of what any GND proponents have: on demand energy, basic medial care, & enviable diets, with the ability to head to a fridge brimming with tofu, brie, chablis, & wheat grass tea.

But what are these advocates actually saying? Do they have any earthly idea how an even marginally implemented GND would impact, like, you know, everything?

Not exactly.

And just here in the good ol’ U. S. of A.

Anywho, the criminally insane UNIPCC, blessed with a cravenly compliant media, wants people to reduce their lifestyles by 40 % across the board. That ain’t going to happen; not to the voices of a Brave New World, who by virtue of their burden, need to be well fed & comfortable in order to dispense measured counsel to the great, clearly needful, unwashed.

You don’t expect most of the latter to know what’s best for them or what their priorities should be, do you?

Hey, if that…um…compromises their ability to escape the trap of poverty and dependence, then so be it.

Sacrifices NEED to be made; just not by the Chosen. Why? They’re self-anointed and enjoy the approval of their collective conscience.

The size of a solar array to power the country would be the size of Massachusetts (from one of my chemistry textbooks). Personally, I am willing to sacrifice Massachusetts to this cause, but it is in the wrong spot. We can probably put such an array up somewhere in Texas without anyone noticing for years.

If I might inject a note of optimism: On AOC’s chief of staff’s tweet about the “leak”, I’ve been reading the responses and virtually nobody is buying it. On other tweets regarding the “official” Green New Deal you have plenty of back-and-forth on whether or not it’s feasible, but they clearly aren’t getting away with the spin on their botched introduction. Also, I find it faintly encouraging that they did take the stupid “rough draft” down instead of trying to defend it, and while it would be nice if Krugman and company threw some cold water on the costs, the longer economists refuse to address the GND, the hopefully the less support it will have.

Until we start imposing surcharges on all these “infrastructure” projects Americans will be willing to spend money on virtually anything.

I would love to see every person get a per capita bill for the some of the crazy appropriations we have witnessed such as shrimp on treadmills, or climate science that is developed to support the prevailing wisdom. When each person gets a bill they may just get a real Woke up call.

That was never the intent. This is obviously unfeasible. The point is to use scare tactics, government giveaways, and pressure from the media to get enough support to install the fascist regime. If they can get enough useful idiots like Krugman to support it, they could convince the brainwashed masses who went to their indoctrination camps and their slave-like followers to vote for it.

“Whether or not rebuilding all US buildings, eliminating air travel, and banning all fossil fuels in 11 years is feasible???”

If they finally provoke the Civil War they want, they will get to live in just such a country.

Want oil? Seems it mostly comes from Red states. Blue states can ban it at will: stop buying it. Win for GND.

Want to rebuild your building? Where do the materials come from? (hint: shortages will make such project unlikely). BUT no building being built in the bad old ways (or at all)? Win for GND.

Air travel will be tough, too: shooting down planes is a common tactic in war. Win for GND.

Cows fart too much? Gee, quit buying the meat now, or wait until the war stops distribution. Cow population will drop due to lack of demand. GND wins.

That Train thing will not happen: train systems are easy to destroy in war, and hard to rebuild while being shot at. Not a win for GND.

The ‘economic security’ for those unwilling to work will have hiccups, too. Without tractors, trucks, or factories to get food, most folks will be fairly insecure. War will stop the distribution chain, and thus this is a win for GND: internal combustion engines will drastically lower hours of use.

Until we start imposing surcharges on all these “infrastructure” projects Americans will be willing to spend money on virtually anything.

I would love to see every person get a per capita bill for the some of the crazy appropriations we have witnessed such as shrimp on treadmills, or climate science that is developed to support the prevailing wisdom. When each person gets a bill they may just get a real Woke up call.

On the topic of getting rid of planes, how much would that isolate the U.S. from the world? Could you fly in and out, but not anywhere within? That seems hypocritical.

If I wanted to spin this, I would say it is one of the most effective anti-illegal-immigration policy ever (most fly in, you know). Then, I would point out how she would be shuttering large segments of the government. Lay-off the FAA, the TSA, and the air traffic controllers; not even Reagan was that evil!

I can’t let this go: Where do you get your statistics that “most fly in”? Thanks to Teddy Kennedy, there has been an increase of “immigrants” from Africa, Uzbekistan, and God knows where else. However, the caravans are not coming from those countries. No, it’s mostly Mexico and Central America unlawfully entering the USA.

Partly, I was joking, mimicking critics of the wall. However, it is plausible that a significant percentage of illegals actually enter the United States legally and simply overstay their visa (the 9/11 terrorists being primarily such a group).

But, now, do this thought experiment: imagine every college and university in this country. Imagine how many students there are. Now, imagine how many of those students are from other countries. My law school had several exchanges with foreign law schools and had an LLM program for foreign lawyers that drew 100 lawyers a year. One law school with 150-200 foreign students per year at a university with more than 40,000 students (probably closer to 50,000, or more). Probably thousands of foreign students, all of whom entered legally with visas issued by the federal government.

One university.

Multiply that by all the other med schools, law schools, colleges, universities, engineering schools, etc. How many foreign students study here every year?

Do you trust the federal government to track them?

How many fall off the grid? They entered legally. They find a spouse, or have a child, they have a pathway to citizenship.

Granted, tracking students here on visas did get more rigorous after 9/11. But student and tourist visas are great ways to become an illegal alien in the U.S., because they let you in.

Other countries? I traveled to Russia once. They knew exactly where I was supposed to be every day I was there. I tried to leave by the night train on my last day there. Problem was: my visa expired 2 hours before I reached the border. That was fun. In typical bureaucratic fashion, because I was not supposed to be in the country, I was stopped at the border and was not permitted to leave.

I don’t want the U.S. to be that stupid, but it could do a little bit better at tracking people allowed in.

Other countries? I traveled to Russia once. They knew exactly where I was supposed to be every day I was there. I tried to leave by the night train on my last day there. Problem was: my visa expired 2 hours before I reached the border. That was fun. In typical bureaucratic fashion, because I was not supposed to be in the country, I was stopped at the border and was not permitted to leave.

Ha. You should have done what my father did in the late ’40s. He flew out to Turkey for a sales trip, returning to Britain more slowly and cheaply by train, crossing every Iron Curtain frontier in between. To save time, or so he thought, he got all his visas in advance at the various London embassies. Then, he found that the visas were all for transit in the other direction. He got round it by bluffing his way each time, saying at each frontier that it was a one off screw up that you might expect from those stuck up embassy people, covering all the other visas with his thumb each time so as not to blow the gaff on his bluffs.

Keeping in mind that the average IQ in the US is 100, which means one out of every two people is a mere twenty point above certifiable idiot, anything is possible. I believe it was Ayn Rand who suggested that all smart people should make an exodus for the hills, allow the fools their reign, and return after they’ve destroyed everything including themselves. It is most likely time to begin packing for higher elevations.

This is my own bias at work. There are some episodes involving ethics where I really cannot comprehend how anyone with all their faculties and raised a U.S. culture can possibly reach a different ethics verdict that I have.

I suspect this is a bias shared by virtually 100% of the human species. One of the hardest things to look beyond is the concept of what we believe meets the threshold of sanity. When, to our eyes, something looks completely insane, we reckon that others must see it the same way.

Alas.

As an ethicist, I suppose it is necessary for you to acknowledge and account for this bias. As a normal layman, I’m comfortable with it.

The kinds of measures being promoted in the GND—forget for a moment that most of them are literally impossible—cannot be achieved through democratic means, except in the broad sense of the public voting to give dictatorial powers to the government.

The GND represents the wet dream of every totalitarian in history — an existential crisis, rather than a merely humanitarian or political one, to underpin the complete takeover of the means and fruits of production in the world’s largest economy.

. After the embarrassing Green New Deal announcement was taken down from the web, Ocasio-Cortez, bolstered by media hacks like Media Matters, began claiming that criticism of its most ridiculous features was a right wing plot, and that a false document, planted by conservatives, was being falsely represented as the actual Green New Deal.

After this was exposed, how can anyone take this woman and her ilk seriously? It beggars belief that a person who styles herself smart enough to propose a completely new system of government (to the United States, that is) to replace a system that has worked more or less well for over almost 250 years could make such obvious mistakes in her proposal, then transparently lie about having done so.

I’m so old, I remember when people like this would be called by a word that’s fallen into disfavor: Shyster. Because that’s what she is, a shyster. Her youth does not mitigate her ambition, ignorance, or willingness to resort to lying to advance herself to a position of power. Never forget, that’s what this is all about.

The mainstream media, with the exception of Fox News, resorted to covering the Green New Deal by collecting reactions to it, rather tahn by reporting the truth: that it was an embarrassment.

Which is why, as biased as Fox News is, they must be paid attention. They are virtually the only broadcast media brand that does not reflexively toe the Democrat party line, and defend their every utterance.

There’s a really clear pattern that’s been in place for many years with socialists/progressives that most people are missing. Socialist/progressive ask for the moon and then Conservatives compromise with something a lot less; the problem is, all those compromises are inching the USA towards socialism one step at a time; here’s a statement that reflects their process; “that’s one small step for socialism, one giant leap for totalitarianism”. Socialists are shrewd and we need to put the hammer down on their nonsense right here and right now.

Do not compromise with the likes of AOC and their “Green New Deal” cult garbage!

It’s the pattern. I’m glad someone else sees this. I think the problem is either some natural desire to get along or Hegelian poison injected into our modern brains by ever-present post-enlightenment antiphilosophies. Regardless, when a progressive asks for a hundred things, and the conservative asks that none of them are implemented, as you say, the God-forsaken centrists bargain, we get fewer than a hundred progressive things, and call it a victory. We need to cast off mere conservatism like a foul, stinking rag, and take on an iron-hard reactionary principle. We need to enter negotiations determined to remove everything: abortion, income tax, the federal army, every bureaucracy – everything. If even one progressive thing remains after that negotiation, let us call that a complete failure and come back again demanding those lost things from the last movement and more: moral authoritarianism, the rejection of the phantom notion of the separation of church and state, the prosecution of public political lies as perjury against the American people and treason.

Hegelian centrism isn’t “fairness”, it’s one of the progressive modern tactics – they play both sides. They’ve been dictating the terms of our surrender all along.

At the ratification of the Constitution and the disbanding of the Continental Army, there was no federal army. Those well-regulated militias mentioned in the second amendment were the sole intended national defense. Quarreling with Indians and other military skirmishes slowly led to a compromised founding of a regular army. A national army was formed for the purposes of World War I, disbanded, then World War II, and never disbanded.

A de-centralized nation depends more on the excellence of its citizens, and, for that reason, demands it. A centralized government permits and ultimately demands laxity and dissipation. Let them depend on us; we’ve seen how dependable they are.

The Constitution did not originally provide for the Federal government to control a standing military during peacetime. The national defense was intended to be handled in peacetime by state militias with the Federal government possessing some control of them collectively for explicitly delineated reasons. Provisions for a small regular army were eventually made to deal with Indian skirmishes, etc., but a National Army as we have today was formed for World War I, and disbanded, and for World War II, and was not disbanded.

I then had a paragraph about how a de-centralized nation depends on and therefore demands excellence of its citizens while a centralized one permits and then ultimately demands laxity. It was a comment to behold. This is just a tribute.

I’m sure I’m not totally confused on this point. I struggle to rationalize the apparent contradiction, though. The term ‘troops’ may indicate a permanent professional soldier as distinct from a civilian volunteer. One can hardly disentangle the legal machinations of positivists, though.

It’s difficult to find authoritative sources online to reinforce what I learned in textbooks years ago. The Foreign Policy Research Institute largely agrees with my point; it’s the best I’ve found so far.

The first decade under the Constitution represented a new founding for all three services. But Congress first had to create an agency to administer military affairs. The Confederation had a War Department headed by a Secretary at War (Henry Knox since 1785). In August 1789 Congress maintained continuity by creating a Department of War, with Knox remaining as Secretary of War. Then Congress formally adopted the First American Regiment (and an artillery battalion raised during Shays’ Rebellion) on September 29th of that year, a date that represents the Army’s third birthday–and perhaps this is the one that should really count. The government soon augmented the regiment with four additional companies, and in subsequent years it slowly expanded the Regular Army. By the early 1800s, the United States had made the critical decision to maintain at least a small standing Regular Army in both peace and war, which was a clear-cut victory for the nationalists and for Moderate Whig ideology.

‘Disband’ is such an ugly word. I’d only recommend limiting federal power to maintain a standing army for the purposes of active conflicts and expanding the role and influence of the state national guard.

Benjamin wrote, “I’d only recommend limiting federal power to maintain a standing army for the purposes of active conflicts…”

I think in the world we’ve lived in since WWII having a standing “army” is absolutely imperative so that we have an equal or superior professional military fighting force that can respond at a moments notice to deter any of the other professional military forces in the world.

National Guard and Reserves really are a very good stand-by fighting force but without mission specific training it’s not ready to withstand a professional active duty military force. The difference between active duty and non-active duty is that active duty are proficient and mission ready all the time, all they need are their orders. Non-active duty troops can be trained up to mission readiness in significantly less time than new recruits and in some cases they jump straight into battle and be reasonably effective, this has gotten better since Desert Shield/Storm in 1990-1991.

In the vast majority of cases integrating today’s armed civilian force (not x-military) into an active war is time consuming; that said, those millions and millions of civilian firearm owners can walk/run/crawl/drive into combat with their firearm(s) and that itself is also a deterrent even for a professional military force.

Z, I’d like to correct something else Ben threw out. Th U.S. Army (nor Marine Corps nor Navy) was NOT disbanded at the end of WWI, but was RIFed to an extent that it was next to pointless. There were a large number of troops (soldiers) serving overseas on December 7th, 1941, and other places, as the 23, 24 years between wars were, as today, filled with a number of brush fires we needed to put out.

Really, I’m surprised my whole tirade was only held up on only this one small point. Things really are better than I would’ve guessed before. As long as it doesn’t touch the standing military, I could pitch a Red Old Deal inclusive of public moral dictates and complete government dependence on sales tax. Maybe I could live with that compromise – just don’t come back and offer me only half!

I am disappointed no one read to the end of the document. It makes it clear there that all these ridiculous provisions are just their as a smokescreen to deflect from the real purpose of this legislation. This legislation is the law to enact a fascist government in the US.

For some time, I have suspected global warming was being used as a bogeyman to justify an increased international governmental intrusion in our lives and to scare us into giving up more of our liberties. I mean, since the Nature paper couldn’t find ANY evidence of warming (the warming is much smaller than the sensitivity of the technique), this shouldn’t be a problem needing drastic and immediate action.

This proposal more or less confirms my suspicions. It creates a set of proposals that would upend society. It treats global warming as such a threat (AOC has stated that it will kill all humanity in 12 years) that it justifies abandoning everything we do to combat it. It references the New Deal and states in its last 2 points reveals the true reason for this bill. It first states that the private sector can’t do this, they can’t move fast enough, they have other agendas, and don’t have enough money to do it (as pointed out earlier in the document that there isnt enough money in the country to get this done). Secondly, it reveals that the ‘solution’ for all this is for “the level of investment required will need every actor to pitch in and that the government is best placed to be the prime driver.” This is the total takeover of the economy by the federal government. The government needs to dictate what each company will do and how it will do it. We will all do what the government needs us to do, because if we don’t, global warming will kill us all.

When FDR started working on the New Deal, he was greatly influenced by the new economic and ‘democratic socialist’ ideas coming out of Italy. He sent his top aides to study under Mussolini in Rome. The National Recovery Act published a brochure Capitalism and Labor Under Fascism promoting fascism. They are right, the Green New Deal does continue in the spirit of the New Deal.

“The problem isn’t that none of the Green New Deal’s goals can be achieved. The problem is that only half of these goals can be achieved. We can’t build high-speed rail everywhere, but we can abolish air travel. We can’t power the whole economy on “renewable energy,” but we can shut down existing power plants. We can’t give everyone a “family-sustaining wage,” but we can definitely kill cows and tell our kids there’s no more milk to drink. We can’t provide economic security for people who don’t want to work, but we can flood the country with billion-dollar bank notes that won’t buy anything. It is very hard to create, but very easy to destroy.”